


ascension

by kincaidian



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:56:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kincaidian/pseuds/kincaidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the night of the massacre, Itachi's Tsukuyomi backfires when Sasuke resists, and Itachi is left with a blind baby brother who doesn't remember that night and still utterly adores him. And Uchihas have always been known for their over-protectiveness...</p>
            </blockquote>





	ascension

_primordium_

_the fire in my bones, and the sweet taste of kerosene_

* * *

His past has turned to ash and is raining from the sky. He watches from afar, Fire Country stretching out under his feet as they are caught by the breeze and scattered gently around, glittering like snow in the last dying rays of the sun. Memories hover in thin air, unbound from the earth but too heavy to depart heavenwards; these are people he knew, loved. _Mother; Father; Shisui._

Sasuke has fallen asleep. He is a warm weight of unexpected comfort on his, Itachi's, back, Sasuke's small arms looped securely around his neck. With each exhale, his breath tickles along Itachi's collarbone, lifting his hair; Sasuke always was a deep sleeper, impossible to wake in the mornings, he was told, unless he sensed Itachi's presence. In turn, Itachi had always believed he could accomplish anything with his brother by his side, and here Sasuke was, a mysterious and terrifying boon, a wondrous gift granted him by his own arrogance and Sasuke's stubborn tenacity.

Because that's who he was; stubbornness breathed life into, his mind a decisive and resilient little thing. Itachi's plans had accounted for the strange linear logic of Sasuke's thoughts; depended on them, depended on his baby brother's strong perceptions of right and wrong. It wasn't until they were both halfway in the genjutsu that Itachi realized that Sasuke was fighting back, or rather, Sasuke was standing still where he was required to walk along a straight line, held in place by a tenet of his life that ran deeper than even Itachi had calculated: _nii-san would never do something like this._

The nature of the sharingan genjutsu demanded that something had to give; Itachi had dispelled it hastily, half-furious and half-overwhelmed, to find an armful of sleeping Sasuke as the restless spirits of their clan clogged up the air around them.

The sun is declining, and Konoha lies behind them, like a vast grey wrinkled sea. Soon, Sasuke will wake up and they would find out the damage wrought by a too-strong jutsu resisted too well. Itachi feels sick to the bone, fear and anticipation, and yes, a misplaced, throat-catching joy because _Sasuke is here,_ and that seems so strange and portentous and undeserved when all he expected was a slow spiral toward death.

Itachi shakes off the ashes from his clothes carefully and turns around and begins walking. He will remember the start of his exile this way; Fire Country running unfettered underneath him, and his brother warm against his back.

* * *

**Ascension**

_I will buy you a garden where your flowers can bloom._

* * *

Onii-sama's voice is soft in your ears; he's trying to wake you, the smell of sunshine in his hair, sweet-sharp tang of lemon tea on his breath. His hand feels warm on your shoulder, pinching your side until you roll over and smile. He laughs, softly, gentle like his touch, telling you that all good shinobi are early risers. You sometimes think that he wouldn't know what to do if you became as strong as he was; because he pushes you to be great, to be the best you can be, but he still gives you a cup of warm milk in the morning and doesn't like to let you out of his sight. He tells you what good shinobi can and can't do, but most of the time it doesn't make a difference, because onii-sama loves you and would let you stay in bed for as long as you liked if you asked nicely.

Onii-sama is a great shinobi; probably the best, even though he always acts like his eyes and his feet are the only things he has over you. You know better. You feel their fear; those big burly men who pound into the earth every time they take a step, whose voices go discordant and rough when they address your teenaged brother. When you were little -younger than eight- this used to confuse you, trouble your mind; onii-sama was always so soft-spoken and polite with his words, and you thought he was the easiest person in the world to love. Then you aged a bit and realized that his quietness made them uneasy because he was stronger and cleverer than all of them put together.

You're clever too; at least, you know how to listen, and onii-sama always said that that was the most important of shinobi skills. You note the agitation in your unflappable beloved brother's voice when your condition is mentioned; you know that he doesn't like to mention your parents, even though he asks you to pray for them every night; you hear the way his breath hitches when someone else comes near you as clearly as any kunai whistling through the wind.

For all his special eyes and training and dark reputation, onii-sama is sweetly oblivious when it comes to some things. He hesitated before leaving you in Orochimaru-sensei's care because somehow, he didn't see that you _adored_ your onii-sama, would do anything to get stronger to protect him from all the things that he didn't know to protect himself from; things that he, blinded by the brilliance of his sight, would never think to guard against.

Sensei was like you. After so long, it was a relief to find someone who didn't rely on the precarious uncertainty of the visual world; someone who knew about the subtle shifts and changes of their surroundings, the millions of clues that lead to the most accurate conclusion. You and sensei understood each other completely, to the point where you wondered if it was him who sent those Konoha shinobi all those years ago, the ones that kept going on about clan massacres and survivors, and how the Hokage would be so relieved.

You had been ten years old then, but onii-sama had been training you since you could remember. So you had waited in your special chair and smiled to yourself, shaking your head when they asked how much you could still see, drinking in their sympathy until they had moved to position and you blew them all sky-high.

You'd cleaned up the mess, feeling out the trails of blood on the walls with sticky fingers and wiping them down before onii-sama got back. Your brother didn't say anything, didn't give any indication that he knew that his blind crippled baby brother had taken down a four-man genin cell, but Orochimaru seemed to guess immediately. You felt the knowledge sticking behind on your skin as he ran his tongue over you to 'see' you better, and that was when you decided that you, not onii-sama, would be the one to kill him.

Orochimaru is still the most powerful shinobi you've killed, even though you are now nearly fifteen years old. Fifteen years old, and tall for your age, though you can't be sure because you haven't met many fifteen-year-olds. The women who smell strongly of flowers and bone-dry powder no longer come to pinch your cheeks when your brother wheels you through the streets of the village, but stand back and giggle and make unnecessary noise. Onii-sama laughs at you and tells you not to pout, that they mean no harm, so you cross your arms and pout harder, making him ruffle your hair with one hand and then leave it there, unconsciously threading his fingers through it as he did the shopping. You discreetly lean into the touch, knowing that you were both aware of what you were doing.

You still crawl into onii-sama's bed on most nights, even though it's a tight fit and your sharp elbows and knees must be digging into him. He never complains; he holds you back tightly, pressing his lips to your forehead, and that's how you both fall asleep. He still blames himself for most things; these days, it's how you don't get to make any friends your age, moving around as frequently as you do. You want to laugh at him, bump your nose against his and tell him he's being silly again; why would you ever want to know people who weren't like them? But onii-sama has his sad, sad smile, the one that makes his lips feel taut and guarded, and you hate and fear that smile so you try not to say anything that would bring it on. It's hard, though, and only getting harder still, because you still don't see the point of losing yourself in the anonymous press of the world of the Others, and onii-sama seems determined to see you make friends and be normal.

The last time you'd had something that could count as a friend, you'd killed him. It had been nearly a month earlier, when you were in a place that smelled of overripe fruit and slushy rain; he had been clumsy and loud, ungraceful in the way he walked. But he stuck to your side for a whole week and didn't stop talking that whole time, so you figured he must have been your friend. You'd used your sharingan on him even though it clearly wasn't necessary; you had been curious, wanting to see what the idiot presumptuous enough to blunder into your life looked like.

The experience had been disappointing. The sharingan deconstructed his already-ungainly movements to a level where you had been unable to feel anything but disgust. He had light brown hair and matching eyes, but these were secondary observations. You wouldn't even have bothered killing him if you hadn't let him see your eyes.

You like the place you're in now; the sun falls on your face and it smells like autumn, brown leaves and crushed grass. At your side, your brother is wistful, but happy. His guilt seems thinner between you, pierced by the warmth of the sunshine, washed away by the rain.

You have a plan.

He's wheeling you down the suspiciously smooth road leading back to your little house when you make three hand seals and burst out laughing when he splutters under the deluge of water.

He retaliates in kind, his jutsu hitting you face-first and even pushing your chair back a little; and just like that, you're both dripping wet and doubling over with laughter, making identical seals so fast your fingers tingle.

Just when he's about to unleash a sizable portion of his chakra on a jutsu both precise and spine-tinglingly efficient, you close your eyes, your heart hammering inside your chest, and say, casually, "Hey, onii-sama?"

He pauses on the boar sign. "Yes, Sasuke?" he asks, amused.

"We'll always be together," you say, looking at him directly with your brand-new mangekyou. "Won't we?"

He freezes, his eyes impossibly wide. Unlike the moron who died to give you these eyes, your onii-sama is _beautiful_ ; his effortlessly alluring dark eyes and the sharp cuts of his cheekbones and ink-colored bangs; his innate grace and strength humming, hidden just below his petal-fine skin.

He falls to his knees before you like a long drawn-out sigh. His hand comes blindly to your face; long, skilled fingers seek you out, and you trap them, bring them close. For a moment you are terrified, because thick dark lashes have swept down to cover his eyes, and you couldn't bear it if he was disappointed in you. You'd rather die.

But then he looks up at you, at your new kaleidoscope eyes. Your breath catches at the expression on his face. It's a mix of pure wonder and awe, much like what you feel when he's around.

"Sasuke," he says, in a low rumble of a voice.

You say, trying to keep your voice still, "yes, onii-sama?"

"You really are," he says, tracing under your eyes with a callused thumb, "the best thing that ever happened to me."

The burning marketplace looks like a thousand perfect sunsets as you hold on to each other, laughing and feeling blessed.

* * *

_I know our filthy hands will wash one another and not one speck will remain_

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> References: The first quote is from a brilliant, brilliant song called Revelry that was probably written about Itachi. The second's from Everclear's I Will Buy You a New Life, and the last one is from Death Cab for Cutie's Soul Meets Body.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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